This will be a site to record my thoughts and musings as they occur. A 'vanity' blog or website. Postings will be sporadic as the nature of this site is not a conversation with others, but a monolog to help me in troubled times.
To Those who find good ideas, they are free for theft so long as attribution is given. They are to be *built upon* not used to demean and tear down. Ideas I present I do not declare to be *good* or *perfect* merely *better* or *different*.

02 June 2007

What a lovely day this hasn't been with all sorts of weirdness showing up when you look at terrorists from the Caribbean basin. The basics you probably already know, but the quick rundown: A group of fine guys were hatching a plot to utilize one of the main fuel lines and reservoir systems for JFK airport to torch it, blow up the control tower and set a goodly part of Queens ablaze. Luckily it was still in the plotting stages, so that is not an immediate worry.

You can't have a plot without plotters and so we come to the list of those involved: Russell Defreitas, Abdul Nur, Kareem Ibrihim and Abdul Kadir.

Now, Abdul Kadir has been identified as an ex-Parliamentarian from Guyana and that fits with this listing from a pdf document of proceedings of their Parliament: Mr. Abdul Kadir, J.P., M.P. (Region No. 10 - Upper Demerara/Berbice). And as a public official he did get involved in a thing or three, and so we get this photo from the Linden Fund for an award presented to a student in his district:

What did we ever do without the internet? From that, however, things get... weird. What are the chances that there will be more than ONE Abdul Kadeer from Guyana? I mean the muslim population there is a small part of the overall population and that name is not so well distributed around the world.

The reason I ask is that there is one very interesting Abdul Hamid Kadir that I did run across.

In a Dept. of Justice case that he brought against Regal Dental Ceramics, from the San Francisco area. Why is this interesting? You see... well, the case does a good job on that, so let me just present the salient bit from page 2:

On October 4, 1993 Abdul Hamid Kadir, ("Complainant" or "Kadir"), acting pro se, filed a complaint against Regal Dental Ceramics, Inc., ("Respondent" or "Regal Dental"), a California corporation, with the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer ("CAHO") alleging that he was knowingly and intentionally fired because of his national origin and citizenship status in violation of § 102 of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 ("IRCA"), 8 U.S.C. § 1324b, as amended.

More specially, the complaint alleges that Kadir was born in Guyana, South America, and became a United States naturalized citizen on March 15, 1988. Compl. at ¶¶ 3, 4 and 6. The complaint further alleges that he was employed by Respondent from October 21, 1991 to May 15, 1992 in the job of "fabrication of understructure of dental crowns/bridges."

Highlighting is mine. Does anyone remember that Amnesty deal from 1986? This is, also, 3 years after the Jamaat Muslimeen coup... but I am getting ahead of myself! We are getting into a vast and tangled web of connections so let us pick them up one at a time and see where they go to. And since I brought up al Qaeda.... have I done that yet? Ok, I haven't, so I will let the FBI do that, this from Michelle's site:

FBI agents feared but never confirmed the three men accused of plotting to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York were linked to one of the most wanted al Qaeda leaders, Adnan Shukrijumah, known to have operated out of Guyana and Trinidad.

The potential threat of al-Qaeda using the Caribbean Basin as a base of operations came to the fore when allegations circulated that Adnan G. El-Shukrijumah, a known al-Qaeda operative, was reportedly spotted in Honduras in June 2004. Despite a lack of hard evidence, U.S. and regional security officials believe that Shukrijumah’s alleged presence in the region stemmed from an al-Qaeda plot to link up with Central American gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS) and Mara 18th Street (M18). U.S. Panamanian officials reported that Shukrijumah was in Panama as early as April 2001, possibly surveying high-value targets such as the Panama Canal, after which it is alleged he visited several neighboring countries [1]. Trinidadian sources go a step further and tie Shukrijumah to the Darul Uloom, an Islamic institute in Trinidad, and claim he may have infiltrated Central America via Trinidad and Tobago with a Trinidadian, Guyanese, or Canadian passport [2].

[..]

U.S. and Trinidadian authorities have kept a close eye on the Jammat’s activities since the 9/11 attacks, but there is no hard evidence tying the group to international terrorism, let alone al-Qaeda. However, Abu Bakr did maintain links with Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi in the 1980s and 90s and considers him a close friend to this day. The Jammat reportedly received funds through Libya’s World Islamic Call Society (WICS) to finance the construction of its main mosque, schools, and a medical center, but there is no evidence linking Tripoli with the failed 1990 coup attempt. Abu Bakr’s most recent publicized links with controversial international figures include Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

[..]

There we have one man connecting al Qaeda with two other localized terrorist groups, and utilizing multiple passports to get around. One can't get around without good ID and here was a lovely source of same, from ttgapers 21 AUG 2004 citing the Toronto Star:

GEORGETOWN, Guyana - A Canadian Embassy employee has been charged with fraud on suspicion of forging 12 passports. Guyanese authorities also arrested a man who is accused of using one of the fake passports.

Varsha Brijmohan, a 24-year-old Guyanese national, was suspended from her post earlier this week. She is accused of forging the Canadian passports while working as an assistant consular officer, said deputy police chief Henry Greene.

Anthony Correia, 23, was charged with fraud after an attempt was made to use one of the passports to buy a car. Both pleaded not guilty to the charges. Their trials begin Sept. 24.

It was the second scandal involving the Canadian Embassy in Guyana in recent years. In the early 1990s, the Canadian government moved its consular services for Guyana to Trinidad after discovering employees were selling visas.

Yes, just drop on by and BUY a real set of Canadian passports direct from the source. Drop on by any time and get your REAL IDs for cold, hard cash. That is obviously one way to get a Canadian passport, and I am sure Mr. Shukrijumah could get a good connection or two to score one. Maybe he could even get a good birth certificate or find a forger to make one for him, and get one instant Western Identity to then roam around the world, used as needed. Speaking of passports there is someone else that somehow got their hands on a Guyana passport, as reported over at Xignite (limited uses available on articles) when the Guyanese authorities uncover the true identity of a terror suspect:

THE Trinidad terrorist suspect nabbed in a Joint Services raid on a house south of Georgetown earlier this week, is not the man he claims to be, sources confirmed yesterday.

The Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Thursday [ 4 May] night announced that the man held in the raid in the continuing search for 30 AK-47 rifles and five pistols stolen from its Georgetown headquarters, had identified himself as Mustafa Abdullah Muhammad, also known as Edmund DeFreitas.

He has, however, now been identified as David Millard, well-known in Trinidad as 'Buffy', who fled from New York after a shooting incident and returned to Trinidad where he moved up the ranks of the radical Jamaat Al Muslimeen group led by coup leader Abu Yasin Bakr.

A top source yesterday said authorities are trying to find out how Millard found his way here and acquired a Guyana passport in the name of Edmund DeFreitas, recorded in the travel document as born in March 1960 at Bartica in Guyana.

[..]

But the Guyana Chronicle understands that Millard was not involved in the 1990 attempted coup.

At the time of the attempted coup, he was in New York, but fled sometime later as a result of a shooting incident. He returned to Trinidad and moved up the ranks of the Jamaat Al Muslimeen.

He never used his Christian name and everyone in Trinidad knew him as Buffy, this newspaper understands.

Trinidad reporters following the case yesterday said that when the Jamaat's number three man, Mark Guerra, was killed in March 2003, 'Buffy' assumed that position and was considered a right hand man of leader Abu Bakr.

On June 4, 2003, in his bedroom in Diego Martin, six miles west of Port-of-Spain, 'Buffy' allegedly met Bakr and two others to plan the murder of two expelled members of the Jamaat. There was a shooting incident that night outside of Port-of-Spain in which one of the two expelled members was shot, but an innocent woman was killed.

[..]

Now wait just a second! Edmund DeFreitas? We have a DEFREITAS on Michelle's site as the main author of this plot for the JFK bombing! And he is linked with that terror group I mentioned earlier. Fun, huh? And he was freed of charges, too, as witness Ummah News:

So, if the leader of the plot thats made to get you and me is THIS guy, then he is the one and the same 'Buffy'. Ok, we are now starting to get a feel for the level of corruption in the Caribbean and Latin America, aren't we? Awash in a sea of fake IDs or real IDs for sale, radical Islamic groups and just plain, old fashioned, regular terrorist groups. Not speaking of Mr. Kadir, which I wasn't, lets do another alias check and see what we get for him! From the very same ttgapers 15 AUG 2004 citing Trinidad Express :

The John Doe witness is said to have told US authorities of a Muslimeen connection to a terrorist cell in Karachi, Pakistan, and of criminal jobs assigned to him by the Muslimeen hierarchy, including gun smuggling, drug trafficking and the payment of laundered funds to key members of the Mucurapo Road organisation.

He told of being directed to rendezvous with a key lieutenant in Brooklyn, New York, and of the latter providing him with false US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) documents and a social security card.

According to US sources, John Doe also testified about a key lieutenant of the Muslimeen supplying him with smuggled cocaine which he, in turn, sold to dealers in Connecticut. He is said to have returned almost all of the proceeds of the drug sale to his Muslimeen contact in the US and other high-ranking members of the group, keeping only a small fraction to cover his expenses.

The John Doe witness, who is said to have had some involvement in the May 30, 2001 failed attempt to smuggle a shipment of machine guns and assault rifles into this country, told US investigators of a Muslimeen plan to take possession of some of the weapons for the group's private use. He is also reported to have been privy to discussions relating to a Muslimeen plan to sell the rest of the weapons to the underworld. Transcripts of taped telephone conversations show a key Muslimeen official detailing plans to sell the AK-47 rifles in Trinidad for US$4,000 apiece.

Small, who has challenged legal efforts to extradite him to the US to stand trial on gun-running charges, was identified by co-conspirator in the aborted arms deal, Keith Andre Glaude, as the consignee to the shipment of 60 AK-47s and Mac-10 machine pistols with silencers, which was intercepted en route to Trinidad by US undercover agents in Fort Lauderdale.

Glaude, a former close associate of Small and another T&T national resident in the US, told investigators of the Muslimeen plan to ship the weapons cache to Trinidad concealed in a shipment of hollowed out furniture.

US agents, who lost track of the guns used in the 1990 uprising, report that the planned method of transportation for the arms cache in 2001 was almost a blueprint of the one used for the April 1990 shipment, which had its origins in Broward County and involved weapons concealed inside a stack of hollowed out plywood.

The guns used in the attempted coup were readily traced to international gun-runner and Muslim prayer leader Louis Haneef who collected them in a two-month buying spree during October and November of 1989. The money to buy the guns had been washed through BCCI, the Luxembourgh-based bank linked to drug smuggling, money laundering, Mid-East terrorism and covert CIA operations.

US authorities following Haneef's paper trail found US$18,000 worth of Bank of Bahrain-issued US Visa travellers cheques signed by Bakr and deposited in Haneef's bank account. Each cheque was good for US$1,000. Both the 1990 and the 2001 weapons shipments involved the use of a storage facility in Ft Lauderdale.

Since their 1992 release from prison on treason and murder charges, 48 members of the 114 original coup-makers, including Bakr, have been charged with a series of offences ranging from murder, through attempted murder and conspiracy to murder, to kidnapping, extortion, narcotics trafficking, armed robbery and possession of arms and ammunition.

Several of their members, including Paul Julien aka Abdul Qadir, have been linked to a series of bloody murders, among them the June 22, 1995 assassination of former Attorney General Selwyn Richardson.

Lawmen found fingerprints and other evidence linking Qadir, a Libyan-trained bomb specialist, to the Richardson murder. Qadir and Curtis Felix, aka Kedar, were reportedly brought in on a $200,000 contract by notorious crime figure Imran Ali to kill the former NAR minister for an unnamed client.

Richardson took six bullets at point blank range in the driveway of his Cascade home. Four days later, Qadir, who was being sought by the police in connection with the Richardson murder, was discovered slumped over the steering wheel of a green Mazda 929, registration PAX 4283, on the shoulder of the Solomon Hochoy Highway. The car was registered to Annisa Abu Bakr, one of Bakr's four wives. Qadir had been shot through the head, execution-style.

[..]

Do the phonetic Islamic transposition tango and Kadir and Kedar makes the spelling of Gadaffi seem easy! Curtis Felix as Kadir? Damnifiknow! But now lets do the rundown of who was NOT involved in the JFK plot directly:

1) Jamaat Muslimeen - well, ok, possibly directly connected, but still not directly named as of this second.

5) BCCI - Bank of Crooks and Criminals International, one of the main money laundering banks before it was shut down by the UK.

6) Keith Andre Glaude. Who?

7) Louis Haneef - Muslim prayer leader and gun runner.

8) Unnamed contact in Brooklyn, NY. What? Brooklyn? That was mentioned at Michelle's site as having a meeting place between DeFreitas and unnamed contact.

9) Canada, for its easy passport sales division.

10) Hugo Chavez via Bakr. Can't seem to swing a dead cat around that region without hitting up Hugo for some flowers.

That is the scorecard so far, but only so far. Now time to get another man's personal review of his life and HIS meeting up with radical Islamic fundamentalists. For that we go to Nazim Baksh at the CBC:

[..]

In the summer of 1990, three months after I joined the CBC, one hundred very angry Muslim men staged a coup in the twin-island Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago. Using an arsenal of illegal weapons they seized control of Parliament, took the Prime Minister hostage and shot him the leg for good measure. They did make him sign a document pardoning them for doing this. The name of this radical group was Jamaat Al-Muslimeen, which translates as “The Muslim Group.”

I knew these characters, had met some of them before, including their leader, Yasin Abu Bakr. I would later run into him while on assignment in the Sudan. There he was sipping tea at the Hilton in Khartoum and complaining to me about how unfair Canadian officials were for not allowing him to visit his family in Toronto. It didn’t take me long to realize that there was a world of difference between the Jamaat’s Islam and mine.

Before I was over that story, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and when the United States and its allies drew lines in the sand he invoked Quranic verses in a desperate attempt to gain support in the Muslim world. He didn’t get my support because I knew that he was quoting verses from the Quran that suited him, leaving aside what would condemn his actions.

Later that same year El-Sayed Nosair shot and killed Rabbi Meir Kahane in downtown Manhattan. It was a completely insane act, an act prohibited under Islamic law.

Nosair was portrayed as a crazed lone gunman who took the law into his own hands. The daily demonstrations outside the courthouse told a different story. I spoke with countless people, some of them friends and acquaintances in New York who had such strong sympathies with Nosair that they donated considerable amount of money for his defense.

Nosair troubled me so deeply that I did my own research and discovered that Muslims who migrate to countries such as the United States or Canada are required under Islamic law to obey the laws of these countries whether they like them or not. No disagreements on this among the fuqaha, the scholars of law. We are not allowed to do anything that will cause harm, physical or otherwise, to our fellow citizens. And if we don’t like the laws or institutions of these countries, we have a choice. But as long as we live here and we accept citizenship or landed status, we are in a contractual relationship with a sovereign state and that contract must be honored. This does not rule out legal protest or the freedom to voice our opinions or disagreements with certain policies.

In 1991, the RCMP arrested five Muslim men and charged them with conspiracy to bomb a Hindu temple in Richmond Ontario and an Indian theatre in Toronto’s little India. I was asked by my newsroom to track this story and I have to say that I was totally unprepared for what I would discover. To my surprise the group these men belonged to was involved in no less than 17 assassinations and fire-bombing in the United States in the 1980s. Trinidadian and Guyanese authorities fingered the group for two more assassinations.

In 1993, Feb. 26, in the last days of the month of Ramadan, a bomb exploded in an underground garage of the World Trade Center. In the days that followed, the FBI founded up dozens of Arab men, the same men who demonstrated in support of Nosair, men who prayed five times a day, fasted like I did in the month of Ramadan. Men who would insist on eating halal meat, grew their beards, had families, wives and children, much like my own.

I spent eight months gathering material for the making of the “Seeds of Terror,” a full-edition documentary aired by the CBC’s 5th Estate exactly a year after the bombing. I spent weeks in New York gathering information on the men implicated in that act of terror. I traveled to Sudan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and came face to face with the terrifying faces of Islamic fundamentalists, men who talked tough and carried dangerous weapons to back it up.

And it dawned on me as clearly as the sun rises in the morning that while we may share a few things in common, they were not my people. They are intruders into my community, loud and obnoxious men devoid of love. Most of them have never read a single line of poetry from Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi or Fariddin Attar. Their books are filled with chemical formulas, detailed map and bomb-making techniques.

They have staged an internal coup, hijacked and ruptured a 14-hundred years-old rich and textured tradition.

They are to Islam what Timothy McVeigh is to Christianity.

[..]

Why he is one of those rarest of species: A Moderate Muslim who speaks UP! But, beyond that, do you notice where he meets up with Bakr? In Sudan. At that time the home of: al Qaeda. A man who would overthrow the government of Trinidad & Tobago for a short period in terror central of the Sudan. Now the picture is becoming just a bit clearer, isn't it? No?

Ok, then lets try this name out of left field to start tying things up a bit on the aQ side: Walid El Hage. Frontline at PBS does a nice wrap up of his nefarious career and his part in the Meir Kahane assassination and 1993 WTC bombing support role. Who is he?

Osama bin Laden's personal secretary.

Lovely how an outside spectator can put in a nice piece to the larger puzzle and start to let one know that America has been 'cased' since the late 1980's by al Qaeda. And right around this same time we get this view from Ralf Mutschke, Interpol's Assistant Director, Criminal Intelligence Directorate in his 13 DEC 2000 written testimony presented to the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime:

In order to smuggle their illicit products into the U.S., Colombian drug cartels began forming alliances with Mexican groups, who have a well-developed smuggling infrastructure for transporting drugs across the vast border with the United States. As Mexicans began to charge more for their services, Colombians established relationships with various Dominican, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and African-American groups which act as smugglers and retailers for Colombian wholesale cocaine. Colombians have also formed an alliance with some of the Nigerian drug trafficking groups based on product exchange. In the early 1990s, Nigerian groups supplied heroin to Colombian drug traffickers in exchange for cocaine. Colombians were able to develop their own heroin market, while Nigerians started selling cocaine in Western Europe. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, an important alliance was formed between Colombian drug cartels and the Sicilian Mafia. Since the cocaine market in the U.S. was saturated, and because cocaine could be sold with higher profit margins in Europe, Colombians wanted to enter the European drug market. The Cosa Nostra’s well established heroin network was easily applicable to cocaine. In addition, the Sicilians had an excellent knowledge of European conditions and were able to neutralize law enforcement officials through bribery and corruption more effectively than the Colombians. From the Sicilian perspective, the alliance with Colombians was an opportunity to regain part of the market that had been lost to Chinese heroin traffickers. In recent years, South American drug cartels have been forming alliances with East European/Russian Organized Crime Groups in order to support and diversify their operations. East European groups have offered drug cartels access to sophisticated weapons that were previously not available. Helicopters, surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and even submarines are on the drug cartels’ "shopping list." The East European groups provided new drug markets in Russia, the former Soviet Republics, and Eastern Europe, while consumption was decreasing in the U.S. In 1993, Russian police intercepted a ton of South American cocaine which had been shipped to St. Petersburg by one Russian crime syndicate working with a Colombian drug cartel. In another example, a Russian crime leader was arrested in January 1997 in Miami by U.S. agents for the exportation of cocaine from Ecuador to St. Petersburg (Russia) and then to the United States. In exchange for these services, drug cartels pay for transactions with high quality cocaine. East European/Russian crime syndicates and corrupt military officers are supplying sophisticated weapons to Colombian rebels in exchange for huge shipments of cocaine. Although the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) receives most of the arms, some of them are distributed to Hezbollah factions.

From the late 1980's onwards a coming together of organized crime and transnational terrorism. And what do we see that John Doe doing? Yes, smuggling cocaine...

More on this later. But think of gun runners, crime bosses, Hezbollah, and the Tri Border Area.

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Trying to save what thoughts I have in case my time for having them comes to an end. I keep many ways of looking at the world and from many perspectives, but they are each a part of a larger whole and reflect my thoughts and feelings.
Diabetic, cataleptic, naracoleptic, hyperlipidemia, cerebral atrophy, allergies and *still* glad to be alive. Founding and sole member of The Jacksonian Party. mail: ajacksonian at gmail dot com

What D&D Character Am I?

Alignment:Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.